MyLegacy benefits from valuable intellectual property and the product is not easily imitable: In order to build a sustained competitive advantage within the marketplace, a product must be valuable, rare, inimitable and organized. For MyLegacy, the product is clearly valuable, as it is built upon a wealth of intellectual property, developed by world renowned geneticists and the Cleveland Clinic. Also, the product is not easily imitable, as building a similar algorithm would require extensive research and background within the field. For those reasons, MyLegacy is on the path to creating a sustainable competitive advantage.
The MyLegacy product is in the introductory phase of the product life cycle: The product life cycle begins with a product first being introduced to consumers and ends with the product being discontinued. The introductory phase of the product life cycle generally includes a substantial investment in advertising and a marketing campaign focused on educator consumers and raising awareness. The introductory phase is rarely profitable because of low sales and high customer acquisition costs.
Many competitors exist in the broad/differentiation segment of the market, but the broad/low-cost segment remains untapped: Brand name companies like 23andMe, AncestryDNA, and MyHeritage have a foothold in the Broad/Differentiation market segment and have conducted tests on more than 26 million consumers worldwide. While these companies may not be direct competitors, the products may be seen as a substitute for MyLegacy, due to similarities in the outcomes. The Broad/Low-Cost segment, however, has seen little traction.